Green Revolution
by Quinton Notwen
Summary: When a new miracle in agriculture is revealed at a local university. But there is more than genius genetics going on in the labs. Can the stranger known as the Doctor stop the Green Revolution?
1. Chapter 1

The screen flickered at the front of the auditorium.

"As you can see, we can, with this new gene, produce three hundred percent more cellulosic material easily convertible for gasoline production, all the while creating nearly five hundred percent more grain and fruit product, from the same plant." The man up front was a tiny spot, a vaguely human spot of suit and pants with some smudge of red that must have been a tie of some sort. "Not only will this fuel the world, it will feed it, and on the same amount of soil and nutrient quality we are currently providing."

Christina sighed. If it weren't for Joseph she'd be at the bowling alley with Tiffany and Cheryl and Buddy. He'd been insistent though, that he wanted her to come to this seminar and after party. He kept saying that this was going to revolutionize the world, make him and his professor rich and famous and save the planet. All it sounded like to her was a bunch of long words and stuff about plants.

After another seven or eight dully made slides there came a question and answer period. God, she hated question and answers. She looked over at her Joseph, he was smiling, almost beaming, ear to ear. He was eating this up. His eyes twinkled behind his thin-framed glasses and he fidgeted under his gray suit. He just loved this back and forth; he even mouthed some of the answers his professor gave to the questions, sometimes whispering the answers before the question was answered by the presenter. After about twenty minutes of the incessant answering of questions everyone looked about ready to get up and go.

"I'm sorry, if I may, one last question?" A man stood up in the back of the room. Everyone turned to stare at him. His hair was auburn, and his face looked like something out of a romance novel. He was wearing an almost outlandish velveteen jacket of a greenish persuasion.

"Yes…?" The man at the front of the auditorium said.

"I'm sorry to be this obvious and I'm quite surprised no one else had mentioned this in the last twenty minutes, but I'm not quite entirely sure where the DNA stock for the project came from, it's not in any of the literature, and quite frankly it seems to just pop up out of nowhere."

Christine looked at her boyfriend, his face was pale. His Adam's apple flip-flopped as he gulped. She looked up at the presenter. The professor was equally fidgety under the scrutiny of the audience.

"Well, we created it under lab conditions, I'm sure I put it in the methods and means section…paragraph…" The professor said quickly, almost regaining his composure as the words left his mouth. He turned as someone handed him a small packet of papers.

"Fourteen, yes, I did see that." The man in the green jacket started to sit down, much to the relief of the presenter, however, the man didn't reach the seat before standing back up. "No, I'm sorry, but," The man put a finger to his lips and tapped it slightly, "the configuration of the DNA, isn't like anything on Earth."

"Just who are you?" The presenter said, his agitation grinding out through his teeth.

"Oh, that's not important right now, the important thing is this DNA is very anomalous, actually anomalous is a bit of an understatement." The man said, he was sidling out of the row towards the middle aisle. "I mean there's this hand wave in paragraph fourteen that says it was a manufactured, patented chromosome constructed in a laboratory, but unless you're an astronomically well-timed genetics genius, this kind of configuration would be impossible to create in any lab, with any DNA, from any organism, in the entirety of the Earth's biosphere."

"Well, sir, I hate to be immodest…" The presenter said, a smug smile cropped up on his face.

The rest of the audience caught the joke and chuckled along with him. The strange man's eyebrows bunched together. He was preparing to resume his inquiry when the presenter cut him off.

"Now, I think the dean is telling me our time is up, I'm afraid we've let many of you stay up far too late without any refreshments." The presenter said, clapping his hands together, shutting down any chance for anyone to say anything, and looked to the audience clearly going out of his way to avoid the middle of aisle of the auditorium. "If you have any more questions, though. We will be having a bit of an reception with drinks and a bit of food in the Green Room in the Steifler building."

With that finally everyone stood up. Christina and Joseph stood. Christina stretched her arms and legs as she waited for the group ahead of her to shift out of the way. She tugged at her dress, a black affair, and finally shuffled forward as Joseph proceeded towards the exit.

"I'm going to talk to Doctor Clampton for a bit, ok?" Joseph said, looking back to Christina. "You just go on to the reception. I'll meet you there."

Christina nodded and took a deep breath as she turned. The man was still standing there attempting to go against the tide of people moving towards the exit and the free cocktails and tiny hotdogs on a stick. She moved towards him and he looked at her. There was a spark in his grayish-blue eyes, like a flicker of lightning at the edge of an oncoming storm. The moment hung for what seemed a small eternity and then snapped back, and she was bustled from behind to go forward, but she didn't not at first, she rather continued to watch this strange man's attempt to go against everything else in the world. Finally he seemed to relent and allowed himself to be washed along, towards the exit.

She stepped out into the night. It was rather cool, but then again it was bridging on the far end of October, and the Indian summer that had brought a week's worth of sultry unpleasantness was avalanching towards frosty evenings where one could see their breath. She stepped down the stairs of the auditorium and down to the sidewalk. People were fanning out across the campus lawn, many snaking along down the sidewalk. She stared up at the sky. The stars twinkled half-heartedly through the semi-present murk of light pollution. She looked around hoping to find the stranger who had ruffled so many feathers in at the seminar but he seemed to have disappeared into the night. She took a few steps and something caught the corner of her eye. She flicked a glance over to where the library entrance was. Along side the library was a strange little blue shed. She'd never seen it before, and she worked at the library. However, she didn't have time to think about that, if she didn't make it to that party Joseph would get agitated, she shrugged her shoulders and turned around and walked down the hill towards the building where the reception was being held.

* * *

"Dr. Clampton, I thought you said no one would ask?" Joseph hissed at the professor as he walked with him to the reception.

Dr. Clampton was a robust man, and a good six inches taller than Joseph's respectable five foot eleven. He wasn't fat per se, but professorially rounded. He had a gray-fanning to white beard that covered most of his face, and seemed to be borrowed from his hairless scalp. His glasses fitted tightly on his small speck of nose.

"One, unnamed man, dressed weirdly, addressing a seminar of respectable scientists asked an undesirable question." The professor replied, waving his hand dismissively. As he talked a small bit of beard just under his lower lip flicked in rhythm to his words. "I disarmed him…he's not a worry."

"But what if he is someone incredibly important?" Joseph insisted as he edged closer to the professor. "If he finds out about the meteor…what if he contacts UNIT?"

"Boy, hush." Doctor Clampton said, increasing his stride. "No one will find out. If we are careful soon enough we'll be able to synthesize the genome on our own, we'll discard the meteor and its contents and forget about the whole thing, ok?"

"It's just, maybe…"

"If we told people where we got the DNA sample, it would stop this research dead." Doctor Clampton stopped sharply and turned around pushing a finger into Joseph's chest. "Look at what's happened with cloned beef, and with genetically modified grains. If we let this out we're going to kill this in the water and think of all the people who will die, hmm?" The professor took a step back and looked at Joseph more appreciatively. "We can save the world, Joseph. You and me, saving the Earth, and not with guns or muscle but with our brains. You just remember that."

Joseph slowly nodded. Dr. Clampton smiled and nodded. He turned and continued towards the auditorium. Joseph followed behind him, a little less excited than he had been earlier that evening.

* * *

The last of the guests were filing out of the reception. The staff were cleaning up plates and glasses. Joseph and Dr. Clampton were taking down posters and charts. Christina walked up behind Joseph.

"I didn't see him." Christina said into Joseph's ear.

"See who?" Joseph asked.

"That guy, the one at the seminar, the one that asked the last question." Christina said, slightly frustrated by Joseph's oblique attitude.

"Eh, probably some troublemaker." Joseph said, rolling up a poster. "You get them, some rival scientist you don't even realize exists, comes to your seminar in hopes of catching you with your pants down. Dr. Clampton has a lot of enemies, you know. For one, big oil companies would hate if we made bio-fuels geographically and economically sustainable co-product of food crops. It would just make their death knell come that much sooner."

"I guess that makes sense." Christina said, not quite buying Joseph's conspiracy theory.

"Right, Joseph, let's get this stuff back to my office." Dr. Clampton said, walking up with an armful of pamphlets and rolled up posters. "And then can you come with me to the lab? I want to lay out some tests for genomic compatibility with certain aquaculture prospects."

"Sure." Joseph said, smiling to the professor. He turned to Christina. "You'll be ok, with getting home on your own?"

"I'll be fine." Christina said, pursing her lips to one side.

"Ok, I'll see you when we get done in the lab." Joseph said and he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

He turned and walked with Dr. Clampton out of the Green room, leaving Christina alone. She was about to leave when the door to the green room opened. She blinked as the stranger from earlier in the evening walked in.

"I've missed them, haven't I?" He said, looking to Christina.

"Just missed them by a minute." Christina said, looking to the man.

The man sighed, slumping against the door frame and then turned and left.

"Hey, wait!" Christina shouted as she ran to the door. She stepped out of the Green room but the man was gone. A cold wind blew across her face as the sound of some far off grating rumbled up the corridor. Christina shivered, wondering why the air conditioning was turned on.

* * *

Christina looked at the clock. It was nearly midnight. She was about to call Joseph when she heard the door of their apartment jangle open. She got up and walked down the short little hall and out into the living room/entry/dining room/kitchenette. Joseph took a few steps into the apartment and turned the light on. He winced and looked up.

"Where have you been?" Christina growled leaning against the hallway wall.

"I'm sorry, we just lost track of time." Joseph said, lifting his right hand to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

"What the hell happened to your hand!" Christina said walking forward and looking at the bandages wrapped tightly around Joseph's right hand.

"Oh, I dropped a flask, got cut." Joseph said, smiling a goofball smile. "Clumsy me. Gosh, I'm starving…"

"You ate at the reception." Christina said, staring at him in disbelief. "Actually you did more than eat, you gorged yourself."

"I know…" Joseph said, pulling away from Christina. He walked to the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator door. "It's just, I'm just craving…Lunch meat…oh and cheese…is there any more of that chicken salad?"

"Oh for God's sake!" Christina said, standing behind Joseph as he pulled out every meat, cheese and associated dairy product out of the refrigerator. "If you're going to eat like that…you'll get sick."

"It's just a midnight snack." Joseph said as he teetered to the stove and dropped the supplies down.

"Well, I'm going to bed." Christina said, turning back around, her cotton pajamas swishing as she moved. "And don't you think you're slinking into bed with pastrami breath and think you'll be getting anywhere."

Joseph seemed to utterly ignore her. His attention was on the five slices of lunch meat he was shoving in his face.

Christina wasn't even sure when he got into the bed that night. Actually, when she woke up, his side of the bed looked surprisingly tidy. She crept out of their bedroom. She frowned as she walked down the short corridor. He probably fell asleep in the kitchen stuffing himself. Christina pursed her lips, that wasn't like him at all. He could eat, a lot, but he was very particular about it. He didn't even like chicken salad.

"Joseph…" Christina offered weakly as she looked over to where the small dinner table was positioned.

It was covered in empty packages, of lunch meat and tins of spam. She walked over to the fridge. It was almost empty. The milk was gone, the cheese was eaten. Even the eggs were gone, she flicked a glance over to the stove, no pots were out. She took a deep breath and turned. Her feet rustled against something and she looked down. A set of leaves, tiny and long-browned were on the floor. She kneeled down and lifted one of the up. She narrowed her eyes when the doorbell rang.

She jumped up in surprise. There came a loud banging on the door. Christina rushed to the door and swung it wide open. She blinked.

"You!" She said, staring at the auburn-haired man. She flicked her eyes over him, the same emerald velveteen jacket, same soft-amber vest with lavender cravat. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" The man said, pushing through the door and looking around.

"I live here, and what are you doing barging in like this!" Christina shouted, grabbing the stranger by the elbow and spinning him around.

"Right, special inspector for the National Academy of Science…legal division." The man said flicking a little wallet shaped thing in her face. Christina couldn't quite remember what it said but it definitely seemed to look official. "I've been following a rumor of experiments that contravene the UN bio-conventions."

"For the National Academy of Science?" Christina asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, we like to save face when we can." the man said as he turned, looking to the dining room table. "Felt like a big breakfast today?"

"What?" Christina said, and her eyes fell on the table. She looked up at the man, his eyes were on her, and she felt like she was under some massive spotlight. "Umm, no, that was my fiancé, Joseph…"

"Ah, and where is he?" The man asked, as he pulled away from Christina and inspected the kitchenette/dining room.

"Actually…" Christina said, slowly following the man. "I don't know. I don't think he ever came to bed last night."

The man was in the kitchen in front of the refrigerator. "A big eater is he? Didn't seem to be from what I saw of him at the seminar…"

"No, I mean he can be…but…not as a course of habit and he already had eaten." Christina said as she watched the man pull open the door of the fridge.

"Ah, you're out of milk…and eggs…" The man said as he bent down. "Plenty of lettuce though, and apples, oh look a quart of orange juice…"

"Look, just who are you?" Christina said, pulling the man up out of her fridge, seeming broken of whatever spell the man had put her under.

"A special investigator…"

"Yes, I know that bit." Christina said, arms crossed in front of her. "Your name…Inspector…"

"Oh…you want a name…" The man said, looking about as if he was trying to pull something out of the midair. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet." She gave him a coarse glare and he avoided her look by sweeping down to whatever now entertained his attention. She looked, it was the leaves she found earlier. "Oh, dear, it's progressed further than I thought, I'd say stage two…" "What is?" Christina blinked, a chill filling her bones. "Is Joseph ok? What's progressed, what's stage two…of what?"

"Miss…"

"Sullivan, Christina Sullivan." Christina said.

"Right, Miss Sullivan, if I were you I'd count yourself lucky." The man replied, staring at the leaf. His gray-blue eyes flicked to her. "Very lucky, and if I were you, I'd go somewhere today, somewhere nice…nice and far."

"Is something the matter, where's Joseph!?" Christina shouted as the man bustled past her. "What the hell is going on! And who are you? And don't pull that special investigator crap."

"Christina." the man said, his voice had an authority that seemed to arise from nowhere but had the validity of everything. She stopped and looked up at him. "I'm sorry, I really am, but I don't have the answers you are looking for."

He turned and left the apartment. She ran to follow him but he was gone. She turned and looked at the empty mess of food containers at the dining room table. She had to find him. She had to.

She quickly got dressed and then ran to the phone. She quickly dialed the number of the library.

"Yes, Mr. Pendle, It's Christina." Christina searched the small table under the phone for her keys. "I need to take a personal day."

"Another one?" Mr. Pendle's voice growled.

"Yes, Joseph's missing. I mean gone." Christina said, finding the keys and snatching them up.

"He's probably just at work." Pendle's voice said, in a tone that said, 'like you should be'.

"I have reason to believe he isn't…" Christina said, looking to the door the stranger had just gone through.

"You can't have another personal day." Pendle said in a annoyed voice.

"But Joseph…"

"No, this is the third time in the last two weeks you've had some kind of emergency." Pendle said, sharply. "It's beginning to wear thin, Miss Sullivan. I'm beginning to wonder how seriously you take your position with us here at the Constantine University Library."

"But…Joseph is missing, he could be sick…or dead…" Christina said she was starting to shake.

"Yes, and I suppose I am supposed to believe that." Pendle replied, coldly.

"YES!" Christina shouted, rage pushing through her worry and fear. "Damn it, I wouldn't make something like this up!"

"All I'm going to say is that I will expect you hear at noon, if you are not here, then I will expect you in the next day to pick up your things from your desk." Pendle said hanging up.

"Damn it…jackass… " Christina said slamming the phone down.

She ran to her car. She got into the car. She had to find him. If he was in danger, she had to find him. She looked up into her rearview window. Her eyes froze, in the corner of the parking lot, the blue shed. The same blue shed from the night before. She blinked and shook her head and looked up again, it was gone.

"Great, now I'm starting to crack up." Christina said, as she thrust the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking space.

If she knew Joseph the first place he'd go would be the university to the lab. Even if he was sick or in danger that's where'd he go. He was stupid like that.

* * *

She pulled into her parking spot at the back of the library and ran into the building. The entire campus was interconnected via underground tunnels. She pushed through the small corridor of offices.

"Ah, Miss Sullivan, glad to see…" Mr. Pendle was standing out of his office.

"Shut it, pig-face." Christina said as she pushed past him towards the stares that led down to the front exit of the library into the main hall of the underground antechamber of the university.

She quickly descended the flight of stares and stalked past rows of bookshelves and globes and statues. She weaved behind low-sitting chairs with far too comfortable of cushions, and tables with glass tops. She rushed passed the metal shelves that 'held up to one hundred different scholarly journals and other reputable publications'. She swept between the large magnetic gates in front of the doors that led into the main-entry of the university and pushed through the doors as the gates clacked innocently.

She strode through the weaving streams of students, maintenance people and the clutches of professors who swept through the corridors. She took the second right on the star-shaped intersection that linked all the major schools of the university. It wound around and became industrial as water and gas pipes zigzagged over her head. Students still passed her, and every once in a while a man in a decent button down shirt and khakis dress pants would walk past, nod congenially to her and then keep going.

There was a heavy metal door ahead of her with a heavy metal bar that you pushed to open it. She burst through the door and blinked. The corridor's lights had been dim, leaving it with a dungeon-esque quality, but the science building was all light and brightness with twinkling gleam that made it look like something from the future. She walked down a short hall and came to the intersection, the first in several grid-like quartiles. The botany lab and greenhouse was on the far side of the building. Professor Clampton was up a flight of stairs. She took a deep breath and decided to go upstairs first. She turned and walked down the corridor to a small set of stairs and then proceeded to climb them to a short platform that turned and led up another short set of stairs which ended on a small entry. She pushed through the wooden door that sealed the entry and walked down another corridor. Labs surrounded her, and people were darting from to door in white jackets and goggles, sometimes carrying small tools with them. At the far end of the corridor was a gantry that hung over the main entrance of the science building and had a large glass wall that let everyone inside look out across the campus.

She walked along a railing and then along a set of offices. Finally she came to Dr. Clampton's office. She walked up to the door and rapped on it heavily.

"Come in!" came the muffled call of the professor.

Christina opened the door and walked in. The professor was sitting behind his desk looking at his computer. His office was exceedingly clean if slightly overstocked. Every unused piece of shelf space had a potted plant of some sort. In the corner of the room, next to a small bookshelf was a potted tree.

"Ah, Miss Sullivan." Dr. Clampton said his face fixed with a smile that oozed with the kind of insincerity only accomplished by ensnared politicians and wounded wolves. "I was just thinking of calling you."

"Calling me?" Christina said, slightly off guard.

"Yes, well, really I was thinking of calling Joseph, you see we've had some complications with the experiments we started last night." The professor said, the tiny bit of his beard directly adjacent to his lower lip flicking with every syllable.

"What kind of complications?" Christina said, her mind now quickly burning through the events of this morning.

"Well, really the complication was in the loss of one of our stocks last night." The professor said, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands into one another. "Joseph was warming it over a burner to get the enzymatic reactions started when the glass exploded…how is his hand by the way?"

"It was bandaged when he got home." Christina said. "Other than that I don't know. I haven't seen him today."

"Really?" The professor sat up, his eyes twinkling in excitement. "Did he say where he was going?"

"No, that's why I'm here." Christina said, standing up and straightening herself. "I was wondering if he was here."

"He hasn't come to me." Clampton said, folding his hands together. He looked to the clock. "But it is time for him to be at work in the lab. It could be that he's in the lab." Clampton stood up, and came around his desk. "Let us go and check together. I do hate it when young love is separated."

Christina looked up at the professor. She never liked him. He had a smug arrogance about him and worse than that there were many times that she knew Joseph had done something that Clampton had taken credit for. Joseph always dismissed it as the way things were done in academia, but it still pissed her off.

Clampton opened the doors of his office and Christina walked out with Clampton following close behind, his hands held behind his back. He stared up at the skylight. They walked to the far end of the hallway and then down a flight of stairs.

"You know your fiancé and I are going to revolutionize the world with this work." Clampton said as he opened the door that led out of the stairwell. "Soon, we'll be able to mass synthesize our chromosome and create a world where everything is green. Carbon dioxide will fall to standard levels and maybe even further. We'll make the human race green and clean and the world will return to its once pristine state."

"Uh huh, that's rather lofty of you, Doctor Clampton." Christina said as she walked alongside the professor. "You really think you can save the world, with this work."

"Oh, more than just save the world, we'll transmogrify it into something far better." The professor replied as he walked up to a heavy metal door. "This way to the greenhouse."

"Aren't we going to the lab?" Christina asked, looking up at the professor.

"For a botanist, greenhouse and lab are just about interchangeable, we've been monitoring some work in here." Clampton said with a smile that looked vaguely predatory. "He could be in here."

Christina narrowed her eyes and then followed the professor in. The air was moist and damp. It was hot and unpleasant in the greenhouse. The humidity clung to the skin and the smell of different chemicals stung hazily on her nose.

She looked up. There was a rustling on the far end of the greenhouse. She looked to Dr. Clampton. The professor smiled encouragingly. Christina moved towards the rustling foliage. As she got closer she could hear a light growling. She stopped in hesitation and turned to look at the professor. Clampton was gone. She turned to move towards the door. A pot broke behind her.

She slowly turned. A creature was behind her. She gulped as she slowly backed away. It was green, covered in leaves. The top of is 'head' there was brown hair interspersed with green follicles and there was a pair of thin-framed glasses poised where the nose should've been.

"No…" Christina said as she took another step backward. "Jo-Joseph?"

The beast growled, lurching forward extending its arms as it did. Christina continued to retreat backward.

"Joseph if that's you…tell me, show me a sign…" Christina said mustering her courage at the table loaded with exotic orchids.

The creature stood in front of her and tilted its head. It growled a gurgling plant-like growl and then tilted its head the other way before resuming its lurching forward process. Christina retreated backward, holding a hand out to ward against the creature that was surprisingly Joseph-like. Her back brushed against the door of the greenhouse. She reached for the handle and it jangled uselessly. She turned and pushed on the door harder. She looked back at the creature; it was closer now.

"Joseph, stop! Please…" Christina shouted as the plant monster got closer.

It loomed over her, its leafy arms raised as if to strike her down and she continued to push on the door. She had to get free. She pushed again as the creature lurched forward one last time…


	2. Chapter 2

Christina pushed against the door but it refused to move. She turned pressing against the door, her tears filling her eyes as the final effect of it all rushed into her mind from all corners. Christina winced as the creature raised its leafy limbs up for was sure to be something deadly. Suddenly the door gave behind her and she fell against a pair of legs. There was a loud shooshing sound as cold white exhaust rushed at the creature.

She felt a hand grab her by the shoulder and pull her out of the greenhouse. She finally looked up to see the flailing of green tails of some dress jacket. Her vision cleared as she pulled the back of her hand against her eyes and flung the tears aside. It was the stranger, his auburn hair glowed in the light. He dropped the red fire extinguisher in his hand and was stooping over the creature with a scissors.

The creature was releasing subdued gurgles of what must have been pain as the man cut into the green flesh. A white liquid oozed out of the wound which the man scooped into vial and then cut a piece of flesh which went into a separate vial. He then backed away, pocketing both vials and closed the door hard. He took out a little metal wand and pointed it at the door. It whirred happily as a resound click of a lock snapped into place.

"Well, that was indeed close." The man said as he turned to Christina. He squatted down and looked at her. "I thought I told you to go somewhere far away."

"I…Joseph…" Christina started.

"Ah, yes, I told you I was sorry." The man said glancing back at the door.

"Did you…did you kill it?" Christina asked, looking up at the man meekly.

"Afraid not, bit of a thermo-shock to induce systemic transition of metabolic protein pathways…" The man said suddenly standing up and looking to the door. "It won't last long…only about…" The door suddenly shook. "Oh, thirty seconds, must be a resilient one."

The door shuddered again, and Christina instantly slid up against the wall. "It tried to kill me!"

"Trying you mean." The man said, taking a deep breath. "It hasn't stopped."

The door rumbled again this time the hinge shifted slightly.

"You mean…"

"It may be a good idea to run." The man said as he backed away from the door. There was another slam against the door and a large gap formed where leafy fingers poked out. "Sooner better than later, I should think."

Christina rose to her feet. The man grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him as he charged down the hallway. Christina looked back a the door flew off its hinges and the beast roared forward in a plant-like way. She instantly snapped her view forward, deciding to look up at the stranger, and follow him.

He turned right and then left zigzagging through the corridors. The creature leafishly clambering after them like some great raging ape. The stranger skidded down a hall and dragged Christina with him. She looked up, she knew this part of the building. It led to a study lounge. It was a dead end.

"Hey, we have to go back!" Christina shouted as the stranger dragged her along behind him.

The man pressed onwards, ignoring her and pushing through the doors into the lounge. It was unoccupied, save a huge blue shed in the corner, which she hadn't remembered being there before.

The man closed the door behind him, turning the lock on it and then ran to the shed.

"Didn't you hear what I said, this is a dead end, there's no exit!" Christina shouted, as she heard the beast growling at the door.

"Dead end?" The man said with a frown, as he pulled a key out of the pocket of his jacket. He inserted the key into the shed's keyhole and jangled it a few times trying to get it to turn. "Why must humans constantly obsess about death, you see the end of a road and think, dead end, why not 'start of a beginning'? Ah ha!" The key turned and the stranger opened the door. "Now come on."

"Are you nuts, it ripped through a hardwood three inches thick like it was made of tissue paper! What do you think it's going to do with your plywood shed?"

"If you want to live, you'll come with me." the man said, holding his hand out as he was standing half in and half out of the shed. He blinked and took a breath. "If you want to die, you can stick around for Audrey II out there to come in here."

Christina quickly weighed her options and seeing how this man had just saved her once from the plant thing it was possible he was right this time as well. She took his hand and was rushed inside. Her heart stopped slightly as the man ran forward stepping up on a dais. Giant stone doors closed behind her. It was like some giant Victorian decorated cave with a ceiling that seemed to stretch into forever. Metal girders swept down to form four spokes around the dais which was dominated by a large hexagonal console with a huge crystal column reaching up into the ceiling.

She turned to run for the doors.

"I wouldn't." The man said as he was circling the console and flicking switches. "Its in the lounge by now."

Christina stopped and turned, her eyes slowly sweeping over the vista again and then she thought of the lounge they had been in and then the box they had entered. "But…this is…it's…I mean…out there…"

"Just let it out, we both know what you're thinking." The man said. "This kind of dimensional shock is common."

"It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside." Christina blurted as if she now had free will to say the absurdity that she was thinking.

"Yes it is." The man said.

"But…how?"

"Oh, that would take far too long to explain and this whole situation needs to be contained." The man replied.

"From in here, I mean as awesome as this place is, we're still trapped in a shed…" Christina said, taking tentative steps towards the dais. She reached cautiously at one of the metal girders as if to test if it was real and then grabbed it to step up. "Can't exactly, you know do much."

"Don't worry, I'll get us to safety." The man said as he flicked a switch and then pulled a lever.

"How, I mean it's not exactly like your shed can turn into a hot rod or a airplane, right?" Christina said, as she cross her arms and leaned against the girder much more confident in its existence than previously.

"Firstly, it could, but it doesn't because it's broken, secondly it isn't a shed! It's a highly advanced alien ship!" The man said taking a deep breath and tugging at his green jacket. Underneath the jacket was a blue vest with a dark brown shirt. It was different from the vest she'd seen him wearing earlier.

"Alien ship?" Christina blinked as the man pulled out a knob and pushed another one in. As he did so the entire room rumbled to life. It was like the ancient gears of some great titanic beast awakening, grinding against the very fabric of reality. An organic grumble as the grinding became a shriek of arthritic parts being coaxed into work.

"Yes as in a vessel built by extraterrestrials, specifically my species. It's called the TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimension In Space." The man said as he circled the console rapidly flicking switching and turning knobs.

"But…that's not real…right? I mean…that would mean that…"

The man fixed a look on her that was far too serious to be serious. Christina gulped slightly.

"But…you look…"

"A wombat looks like a groundhog that doesn't mean they're remotely the same." the man said turning a dial. He looked up at her again. "I'm an alien, Christina."

"Sure you aren't even half hu…"

The man shot a withering glare at her that stopped her in her tracks. Christina looked down, this was impossible. It was all impossible and she knew it was impossible because these sorts of things don't happen to library associates. At least she was pretty sure this didn't happen to library associates. She'd tried remembering if any of her friends had mentioned anything like this. Amos always talked about having wild dreams of being taken by aliens, but Amos was, admittedly, a bit odd even for a library work-study student.

Suddenly a thought struck her, she looked up at the man. "What is it? I mean the plant thing…is it an alien, too?"

"Your fiancé and his professor have been dabbling in things they shouldn't." The man said, taking the vials out of his pocket. "I don't know where they got it, but they most certainly didn't know what it was, or they'd have ran away from it."

"What is it?" Christina asked.

"It's a Krynoid plant." The man said, taking a deep breath. "Or at least the results of its genetic material."

"What's a…Krynoid?"

"It's a plant, bit of a weed, worse than a weed." The man said, as he walked off the dais towards a set of chairs by a fire. Christina followed him. He snatched up a book and opened it. "It travels from planet to planet, and when it lands it stings the closest mobile organism, nine times out of ten the stung organism is an animal. You see, the Krynoid have a symbiotic relationship with a retrovirus, and via this relationship they can literally transform an animal into a Krynoid. They do this and then take over, spreading like wildfire across the entire biosphere, eating everything. Nothing survives. I've seen entire civilizations wiped out by them. Their the ultimate invasive species."

"And Joseph and Dr. Clampton were messing around with it?" Christina said, inside she was growling at Joseph for being so stupid.

"Well, they were trying to do something very brilliant with it." The man said as he lifted the vial up and looked through it. "It's a shame they were so stupid about how they were doing it."

"But that thing, it looked like Joseph." Christina said, looking up at the man. "It turned Joseph into one of these Krynoid things, didn't it?"

"I'm sorry," The man said as he finally seemed to finish whatever he was doing at the console and looked up, his blue-gray eyes looking more like a morose fog than a building thunderstorm. "As soon as he was infected, there was nothing that could be done."

"There's no cure?" Christina said, looking at the man.

"No, I'm afraid not." The man replied. He looked at Christina. "Right now, though we need to worry about everyone else. That creature is going to spread." He looked at the vials again. "I have to look at these under a microscope. To tell you the truth, this one is acting funny. It should be already forty feet tall and controlling all plant life, but it isn't."

"You talk like that's a bad thing…"

"With the experiments that your fiancé and that professor were doing on the plant and the Krynoid's naturally integrative genome, any aberrance in behavior is a bad thing." The man said as he started to turn.

"You know, I never thought to ask…" Christina said as the man started to walk towards a pair of large doors. "What's your name?"

The man stopped. "I'm the Doctor."

"And…that would be Doctor…what, Spock?"

"Just the Doctor." The man said with a smile and he turned to continue on his way. "Feel free to sit down for a while and relax. We're in temporal orbit right now, so nothing overtly dangerous should happen to us."

"But I thought it was dire to stop that thing." Christina said, slightly shocked at the laid back suggestion

"I did say temporal orbit." the Doctor said, without turning around, as he opened the doors and disappeared down a corridor.

Christina took a seat on one of the chairs and took a deep breath, saw a tin with little cookies and took one out and took a bite. This was most definitely not something that happened to library associates.

* * *

"Joseph, calm down." Dr. Clampton stood at the entrance of the lounge where the creature was raging. It felt like it was glaring at him, but the thing didn't have eyes, or at least not eyes that were readily identifiable. Dr. Clampton held up a slab of ham. The creature reached out for it and Clampton pulled it away. "You can understand me, still, can't you, Joseph. Nod if you can."

The creature tilted its head slightly and then nodded slowly.

"Great, now where is that man?" Clampton asked as he looked at the creature.

The creature turned and lifted an arm at the corner of the lounge. Clampton took a breath through his nose. He wasn't sure what that meant. There were no exits.

"Did you get him?" Clampton asked.

The creature shook its head slowly.

"I see." Clampton didn't really, but he didn't want to show any unease lest the creature interpret it as an opening. "You need to go to the greenhouse, do you understand?" The creature growled. Clampton held out the ham. "I said do you understand?"

The creature growled again, but didn't advance. Clampton slowly backed out of the lounge area. It was noon now. Most of the professors had lunch at this time and since there weren't many classes at the moment most of the activity was upstairs in the labs. Most of the quartiles on the first floor were displays and storage. Except for his botany labs which needed to be close to the greenhouses.

Dr. Clampton carefully led the creature to a little corridor that cut between the storage areas, and then ended at the back exit of one of the botany labs. The creature seemed to follow him, but only as a feral dog follows a man with a soup bone. He didn't trust the creature in anyway, and he was quite sure that the creature didn't trust him.

It was something he had had to see. He had heard the rumors from Great Britain back in the seventies or eighties - the records were never very clear - of a mad horticulturist and his monster plant that had be put down by UN military forces. He had seen the potential for it, and when he'd heard that there was a possibility that maybe he could get his hands on some fragment of that legend had survived he had to get his hands on it. That had been the start, but this was an accident, but a fortuitous one. To have a living specimen to now research would make the work on his go even faster. If only now he could get rid of that pesky stranger and it would seem Joseph's fiancé.

He turned to open the lab door. He lifted the ham up, and then allowed the creature to stumble in. He used the door as a shield and then when the creature had past rushed ahead of it, making sure to put a table between him and the beast, as he worked his way towards the next door. He looked out the window of the lab across the hall and frowned.

"You made an awful mess." Dr. Clampton said as he looked to the torn open greenhouse door. He sighed. "I suppose I'll have to lock this lab up, and pull the blinds."

He looked to the creature and then threw the slab of ham to the far corner of the lab. The creature almost gleefully bounded after it like some photosynthetic St. Bernard. Clampton quickly pulled the blinds and locked the backdoor. He then shuffled towards the main door to the hallway adjacent to the greenhouse, opened it and quickly locked it behind him. Now he had to go to Frieda and have her email the students that the lab was closed for some reason he'd yet to make up. He chuckled to himself as he thought maybe he'd scare them by dreaming up a practical exam as he returned to his office.

* * *

Christina laid in the small davenport that rested across from the small chair. The Doctor's choice in books was rather cliché for a time traveling alien. It was all A Brief History of Time, The Time Machine, The Time Traveler's Wife, A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Not to mention that record in the period fitting phonograph was Jim Croce's You Don't Mess Around with Jim, and she just bet…

"If I could save time in a bottle…."

Crooned the record after she flipped the switch on.

"Oh, do be careful with that, I got that off Jim before he got on that plane." The Doctor said, suddenly appearing out of the corridor. "It has some sentimental value."

"What have you been doing? I've been waiting for…" Christina stopped to think about it for a second, how did one measure time in a time machine.

"It takes time to do the proper tests." the Doctor said as he walked to the console. "But I did get results, and as I said before, 'any aberrance in Krynoid behavior tends to be a bad thing'." He flipped several switches and the area above the console flickered to life as a holographic image of two twisted ladders appeared above his head. One had a bright red dot on it, the other didn't. The Doctor pointed to the twisted ladder with the dot. "This is an image of a normal mature Krynoid DNA, this red dot is an inhibitor protein, it blocks the transcription of the retrovirus." He then pointed to the non-dotted twisted ladder. "This is an image of the DNA I got from your boyfriend. No inhibitor. He's still producing retroviruses. I noticed that there were other aberrations in his DNA, he's producing proteins for structures he should've sloughed off by now, like stingers and such. I mean it's like he…"

"Stop talking about that creature like it's Joseph." Christina said looking up at the Doctor. "That thing is not a he, it's not my fiancé. My fiancé was killed by that thing…got it!?"

The Doctor blinked and nodded. "This Krynoid is like it's trapped in a juvenile form. It's paedomorphosizing as we speak and that's bad."

"So it's only going to go after small children…" Christina shook her head not quite sure what the Doctor had just said.

The Doctor blinked at Christina and then seemingly jumping into Christina's thoughts smiled, "No, no, it's simply maintaining juvenile features in a more mature form. Anyways, it's bad because that means that this particular Krynoid can now infect multiple victims, instead one or two Krynoid being active we'll have an entire planet full of them. That is if we can't contain it."

"Well, then let's contain it." Christina said as she walked up to the dais. She looked up at the Doctor. "And how do we do that?"

"Ah, well, that's the tricky bit." The Doctor said as he circled the console and started flipping switches. "You see the Krynoid are particularly resistant to almost all herbicides, they maintain stringent chemical defenses against any insect, bacterial, fungal or any other form of biological pest. The last time I encountered one, the only way we could stop it was by shooting high yield missiles into it." The Doctor stopped and thought for a second. "I don't think I could get clearance for that this time though…"

"So we have to blow it up?" Christina said, looking at the Doctor intently.

"Well, yes, but it's in the science building." The Doctor replied as he flipped the final switch. The crystals in the central column started to move up and down and the horrible arthritic grinding resumed. The Doctor was on the far side of the column.

"Not a problem, I'm sure we could whip something up in the chemistry lab." Christina said, clapping her hands together. "I've always wanted to a make a bomb in a chemistry lab."

"That's a very good suggestion." The Doctor said and then stopped, poking his head around the column. "It also happens to be a very violent one."

"You said the last time you used missiles!" Christina shot back.

"Well, it was a bit more drastic." The Doctor replied, his head disappearing back behind the column. "I'm just saying the college probably wouldn't appreciate an explosion…"

"And they'd appreciate a zombie holocaust of plant monsters?" Christina replied, circling the console to look the Doctor in the face.

"You do have a point." The Doctor conceded coming back around the console. "The thing is Krynoids only need a little photosynthesis to stay alive and survive. If we're going to kill it we have to destroy photosynthetic parts."

"The leaves right…" Christina asked, looking over at the Doctor.

"Yes, that's right." The grinding stopped and the Doctor looked to Christina. "You can leave now, if you want. Run, like I told you to earlier. I wouldn't think any less of you."

"It killed my fiance." Christina said. "I can't let it take anyone else's, can I?"

"It could get dangerous." The Doctor replied, pulling a lever. The giant stone doors swung open.

"Life's like that though." Christina said, looking to the opened doors.

"Yes, it is." The Doctor smiled and walked away from the console. He turned, "Come along, this way."

Christina smirked and followed closely behind. The exited the TARDIS she looked around. They were outside the university library. She looked to the Doctor and then it dawned on her, that the new shed was the TARDIS.

"What are we going to do?" Christina asked.

"Clampton locked you in the greenhouse with the Krynoid, right?" the Doctor said, looking at Christina.

"Yeah." Christina said, nodding.

"That suggests he knows what it is, or at least has known what it could be." the Doctor said, taking a deep breath. "I think we should possibly speak to the man himself."

"But the creature's in the science building." Christina said.

"There's no alarms going on, and people aren't screaming in abject terror, Clampton must have corralled it." the Doctor replied, then he scrunched his face up, "or I've miscalculated and we're too late and the Krynoid's killed everyone…but I think it's the first."

"So we're going back to the science building?" Christina said, trying to figure out where this is going.

"Not safe enough, and I don't have a plan. Do you have any kind of way of calling this Dr. Clampton?" the Doctor asked, looking to Christina.

"Actually, I work at this library, or…" She looked at her watch, it was almost two. "Well, worked, but I still need to clean out my office."

"Perfect!" the Doctor said, smiling happily as Christina led the way.

* * *

Doctor Clampton had canceled his classes. He had far too much to worry about now. The students hadn't minded, they usually didn't. There had been some question about the door being destroyed, but he'd quelled it with some explanation about rowdy students and explosives. It was surprising what some people would swallow if they didn't care.

He sat in his dark lab, staring at the creature. He'd fed it again, and now it was sitting under the sunlamp he'd brought in. According the stories he'd heard the creature was supposed to get huge. Yet this one was aggravatingly staying the same size, and roughly humanoid. The one thing he did notice was the development of buds on the surface of the creature, like flower buds. He pursed his lips as he thought about it. They had done extensive studies on the samples they had, but the plant's chromosomes were always left intact. There shouldn't have been a mutation in any functional part of the plant and yet.

Clampton stood up and walked closer to the creature. He circled the circumference of the lamp's light.

"Something's not right." Clampton said to the creature. It ignored him, basking in the lamplight. "You should be growing. You've been eating and eating, where is all that energy going hmmm?"

The creature turned its head and seemed to look at Clampton though there were no eyes to see. It tilted its head one side to the other as if pondering the question. It then turned its head back and stared into the distance. Clampton grumbled as he returned to the table he'd been leaning against. He rolled his tongue from one side of his mouth to the other. The energy had to be going to something. All that food, all those calories, had to be doing something.

Suddenly the phone in the lab rang. Doctor Clampton started a little, surprised by the noise. The creature ignored it. He got up slowly and walked over to the phone. He slowly picked it up and put it to his ear.

"Hello?" Clampton said, not sure what to expect.

"Yes, you said that you wanted your calls routed to the lab." It was Frieda.

"Ah, yes, I had said that hadn't I…" Clampton replied slightly surprised.

"There is a Christina Sullivan on line one for you, Doctor Clampton." Frieda said, her voice had one of those annoying fuzzy high pitches that grated.

"Yes, thank you, Frieda." Clampton said, hanging up on the woman and quickly pressing the button to complete the transfer.

"Hello." Clampton said, taking a deep breath.

"I'm the Doctor and I have to say, I'm glad I got to you before you got yourself killed." A man's voice replied.

Clampton narrowed his eyes, it was the stranger from the seminar. "So, it's you."

"Yes, I'm here with Miss Sullivan." The man replied, cheerfully. He had an accent that sounded roughly British. "I'm just going to warn you, that the thing you've unleashed will destroy the planet. Do you even realize what it is?"

"It's an alien plant, that was destroyed by the UN forces…" Clampton replied. "Evidently part of the Chase Foundation kept some of the samples from plant and I purchased them, because I know its potential. Your assertion that it will destroy the planet is a false one. I am in perfect control of it, and under my control it can save the world."

"Ah…" The man said quietly. Then his voice came over though it sounded like it was projected to someone else. "See, Christina, never trust a botanist, they tend to go a bit mad when they get old." The voice became clearer. "You can't control a Krynoid. Especially this one. It's aberrant, it's still producing retroviruses, that means it's still infectious and thusly more dangerous than any creature on this planet."

"Feh, if you know so much, then tell my why I've been able to keep it perfectly peaceful for the last few hours, with a little meat and a little sunlight." Clampton said smugly. Clampton turned and smiled at the creature as it sat in the lamplight. "In fact I'm standing here looking at it right now."

"You - what?" The man's voice said. "You have to get out of there immediately! It's biding its time building up energy. If you don't get out of there you'll be its next victim!"

"Doctor, have you no faith at all?" Dr. Clampton said quietly turning away from the creature. "Didn't you see the results we got in our experiments. Imagine it, a world without global warming, a world where everyone is fed and fueled and happy, wars would become fewer, poverty would be put to an end…"

"Animal life would become extinct." The man replied. "That plant will destroy Earth's biosphere, every organism that isn't a plant will die, and then the plants will be absorbed. Nothing will survive, it won't matter if the planet boils. That creature must be stopped before it can…"

Doctor Clampton didn't hear the rest of the message. He'd dropped the phone. The creature had moved, out of the lamplight, and was moving towards him in a surprisingly fast fashion. The buds were open and filled with barbs.

"Now stop!" Clampton replied holding his hands up to the creature. "Stop and I'll give you a big ol' steak. You hear me, get rid of me and no one will feed you."

Dr. Clampton screamed as the creature lashed his arm with one of the barbed stingers. He staggered back to the door of the lab as the creature stalked towards him, preparing for another attack. Clampton fumbled with his keys and stuck the correct one into the door. He was starting to turn it when another lash came across his back. Dr. Clampton fell against the door and it slowly swept open. He crawled into the hallway but the creature lurched after him. It tilted its head and looked at him and then turned.

Dr. Clampton winced as he crawled to his feet. There was only one way of keeping the creature in place. He leaned against the wall and got to his feet. He staggered to a series a fire alarm. Next to the red box was a green box with an orange hazard symbol on it. He punched the button. Alarms went off as the loud speaker announced.

"This is an emergency quarantine! No staff or students are allowed in or out of the building!"

He could hear the sound of metallic shutters falling into place at the entrances of the building and the sound of surprised students and faculty rushing about upstairs. He watched as the creature walked down the hall like a lion following its prey. He looked down at his arm and saw it the veins in his arms were pulsing a bright green. Dr. Clampton felt dizzy and then slumped against the wall.

**AN: This is my first attempt at a full story in this show. I don't know how long it will be. The story is rather basic...**


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor put the phone down. He took a deep breath through his nose.

"Well?" Christina looked at him, her eyes darting from his to the phone.

"Dr. Clampton has just become this Krynoid's first victim." The Doctor said, looking to Christina.

"What are we going to do?" Christina looked up at the Doctor. She was out of her depth, her world just didn't work like this. It was mainly processing requisitions and rubber stamping things.

"We have to stop this now." The Doctor replied he turned.

Sirens were going off outside. Christina walked to the end of her cubicle and looked out. There were a number of others looking out as well.

"What's that noise?" the Doctor asked as he looked out as well.

"It's the quarantine warning." Christina said quietly.

"Quarantine?"

"Yeah, the science building houses a microbiology lab that works on vaccines for influenza and some antibiotics for a few bacteria." Christina said, looking up at the Doctor. "Joseph said that the science building has giant metal shutters that come down over every exit if there is a quarantine situation."

"Clampton must have hit the alarm." The Doctor said, pursing his lips as he stepped out of the cubicle.

"So everything's ok then right?" Christina said, looking at the Doctor. "I mean the building's locked off, the Krynoid thing can't get out."

"What about that poor receptionist, and the students and other professors inside?" The Doctor replied taking a deep breath. He started to walk to the exit of the library. "We need to get in there and stop them both."

"Both?"

"Clampton was attacked by the creature. The creature is still infectious. Clampton is becoming a Krynoid." The Doctor said walking toward the door.

Christina ran after him out the door. He was walking towards the blue shed, his ship, the TARDIS. She ran up behind him as he opened the door and he looked down at her.

"You don't have to come." the Doctor said, as he looked at her.

"You can't handle both of them on your own though." Christina said, looking up at the Doctor.

"Actually…" The Doctor said.

"I want to help." Christina replied, stopping him from continuing.

"Right, then." The Doctor said, ushering Christina into the TARDIS.

He ran to the controls and started flipping switches. He pulled a lever and the entire inside shook as the vessel squealed into action. He took a pad of paper and a pen out of his pocket and started writing a list. He squinted at a monitor and then the ship shuddered to a stop.

"Where are we?" Christina asked as the Doctor pulled another lever and the doors opened. He started to rush to the doors.

"Lounge that we left. I just did a short reverse…trying to pinpoint specific targets in such a small range is rather difficult, the only way to do it is if I use coordinates I already know. Otherwise we'd just materialize where I needed to go." The Doctor said as he rushed out of the vessel. Christina ran out of the TARDIS and it was, the same little lounge with the same not quite comfortable couches and chairs. The Doctor turned to Christina, handing her the pad of paper. "Now, I need you to go upstairs to the chemistry lab. Collect the chemicals on this list, I've written down their chemical formula, name and even colloquial names just in case. I'll go downstairs into the boiler room, see if I can't jury-rig some sort of something together for a distribution system."

"Distribution of what?"

"A defoliator!" The Doctor said as he turned to rush off.

"Wait…" Christina grabbed the Doctor by the arm. "The labs get locked off too, and the classrooms. I can't get into them, and even if I could the chemicals would be locked up."

"Ah." The Doctor took out the little wand he hand earlier that looked like a spanner. He pushed it into her hands. "Sonic Screwdriver, can unlock just about any door." He took her hand and maneuvered her fingers around saying, "Setting one for normal locks, padlocks and deadbolts, setting two for combination locks, setting three for magnetic seals, and I think setting four is for landmines, can't remember haven't used it in a while, either way you shouldn't need it. Got it?"

"Locks, combinations, magnetic seals." Christina nodded, her fingers mocking the Doctor's motions. She then looked up at him. "What about you?"

"Oh, I've got my ways." The Doctor said smiling as he took out what looked like a small bundle out of his pocket. "Now, I'll meet you in this lounge when you get the chemicals." He took out a key, "This is a key to the TARDIS, once you get the chemicals get back into the TARDIS, you'll be safe there. I've got another key, so once inside don't open the doors for anyone." The Doctor turned to open the lounge door, he stopped and looked at Christina. "Be careful. The Krynoid is going to be looking for victims, both of them. The more mature one will turn you into a Krynoid. Clampton, he may just eat you."

"You be careful, too." Christina said, looking up at the Doctor.

The Doctor smiled and nodded and in the next second he was gone. Christina looked at the pad, and then looked at the sonic screwdriver, gulped and nodded and then ran for the stairs.

* * *

The Doctor flicked up the pick and slid it into the keyhole. It was one of those times in one's life when one realized how much they had come to rely on things like sonic screwdrivers. He used to be able to pick any lock in under three minutes and now it was inching incredibly close to five minutes and he was still playing about with it. He knew he lost a lot in this regeneration, though he loved to think that he gained so much more. For instance, he didn't have this compulsion to have forty-seven metaphorical plates spinning on a Machiavellian machination just to prove that he was someone that garnered respect. He didn't need frown so much. Of course without that compulsion he'd found that he wandered rather aimlessly and had a little less attention for things, could it be that he'd developed some sort of Time Lord ADHD from the regeneration, if he did it was definitely due to that dose of anesthetic because he most definitely didn't have that kind of mentality in himself. He'd have to talk to Grace about that.

He took a deep breath. "Maybe not."

He pulled the pick out of the key slot and pulled out a different one. He should think about getting a second sonic screwdriver. It was one of those things one always talked about getting like getting a tire gauge or a small camera for the glove compartment. People always talked about doing it and always probably intended on doing it but by and large it got shuffled about and pushed around and everyone tended not to do it and then grumbled when they realized how important that sort of thing would be.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes as he looked at the insulting lock. "Of course none of this would be necessary if I'd kept my skills up instead of going off sonicking up everything. Always rushing about from place to place, never thinking, that's my problem…" A sound came up from behind the Doctor. He shifted his weight quickly barreling out of the way as the rough form of Doctor Clampton smashed against the door. The Doctor looked up. "Ah, and another problem."

Dr. Clampton growled a saliva growl. Bits of green tendrils snaked around one arm. It glared at him.

"Doctor Clampton…" the Doctor said slowly backing away and lifting his hands. "I know you're still in there, fight it."

Dr. Clampton growled. His beard was now tinged in green. Tiny leaves sprouted from his scalp.

"Let's talk about your dissertation from your doctorate work." The Doctor said, continuing to back away. It was always good, when dealing with semi-possessed beings to appeal to the host's vanity, it tended to bolster a bit of resistance. "I believe it was about interspecific breeding of plants to create new species right? I read it, when I looked you up. Very good I would say, and considering what happened rather relevant don't you think?"

"You…looked…me up?" Dr. Clampton stopped for a second, he was still slobbering but his eyes seemed to be less bestial.

"Yes, well, I was worried that it was some crazy fanatic who had been connected with Chase that was pulling this off." The Doctor replied as he edged towards a nearby fire extinguisher. "Come to find out it wasn't."

"Yet you wish to stop it…" Dr. Clampton replied, he was still lurching forward.

"You know why." The Doctor replied, sliding his hands along the wall as he retreated. "This Krynoid creature isn't just some plant it makes _Lysmachia_ look tame. I told Chase and I'll tell you, this isn't the kind of thing one can control!"

"You knew Chase?" Dr. Clampton stared at the Doctor. "Impossible, you can't be more than…"

"Yes, I know amazing." The Doctor said, seeing a conversational off ramp and choosing not yet to exit the stream of conversation. "Let's just say I was a different man back then, none the less even for being a different man I can see the danger the same. Now whatever you've done to the Krynoid's DNA has made it even worse than before. We have to stop it before it gets worse, do you understand that?"

"The Krynoid…" Dr. Clampton narrowed his eyes. "It will continue. We will make a new world."

"It will kill everything!" The Doctor retorted. He knew it was hopeless but he had to try something. "Don't you understand that, Doctor Clampton?"

"We do not kill." Dr. Clampton replied. Except it wasn't Doctor Clampton. It was simply using his vocal cords. "We integrate. All life becomes Krynoid." Dr. Clampton's head tilted. "That which is animal is transformed, that which is plant is archived in our DNA. We have the remnants of millions of worlds, plant species long since extinct still can be remembered in us."

"Is that the Krynoid?" the Doctor asked.

"We are Krynoid." the professor's body said, it's head tilting in the other direction. "You, we know. You're face has changed but your words are similar."

"Genetic memory…" the Doctor murmured as he stared at it. "We already have been through this bit." He wanted to try and do something no one had ever done before, convince a Krynoid to stop. "You have to realize what you are doing is wrong! If you are half as sentient as you're displaying now, then you must see that you're killing many innocent life forms."

"We do not kill…"

"Yes, you integrate." the Doctor said rolling his eyes. "Have you ever considered that maybe some of these life forms do not wish to be integrated into a Krynoid genome archive?"

"Animals see no use in consulting the plant-life they consume." The professor's lips replied. "We see no purpose in consulting the animals."

"Yes but the plants on many planets aren't sentient." The Doctor replied.

"Untrue." the professor lifted a hand and sprouts ripped through his flesh as he became more plant-like and less human. "It is a sentience unlike yours, without the convenience of neurons and bio-electrics, but it is sentience, culture, civilization. Chase understood, we wished to have shared that with him…"

"Yes, and you killed him."

"We do not kill…"

"Right, integrate." the Doctor said shaking his head. "The point is, you can't just do this. You can't."

"Why?" The Krynoid stared at the Doctor the last visages of Clampton's face becoming a mesh of vines and greenery. "We spread, we go forth. We see and look and absorb. We archive and evolve. Are we not the same as animal life in that respect? Do we not deserve survival?"

"It's not a matter of you surviving; it's a matter of how you survive." The Doctor replied his fingers touching the top of the extinguisher. "You consume other life forms and then destroy biospheres."

"This world, these beings do the same as we. They even take pride in the consumption of plant life. You do not stop them." the Krynoid replied. "Why do you not stop them?"

The Doctor stopped and blinked. He'd never thought of it. He narrowed his eyes, he didn't have a good answer for the Krynoid. It scared him. He knew this was wrong, every fiber of his being told him it was wrong.

"It's because you do it knowing that you're doing it." the Doctor replied, looking up at the Krynoid. "The humans on this planet, the beings out there in the galaxy even the High Council of the Time Lords, don't realize the sentience of the plants they consume. Maybe we should." The Doctor looked at the Krynoid. "None the less, our survival predicates on the consumption of plants on some level, and that which we do not consume we respect in our art and our religions. We honor that which we consume. You don't. You consume because it's there, with no concept of conservation or reverence."

"The Krynoid must consume…" the creature replied. "It is core to our being."

"I see. That makes this decision very easy." The Doctor replied, his fingers gripping the hose of the extinguisher behind him. "And I'm very sorry about this, call it plant bigotry if you like…"

Within seconds he had the extinguisher pulled from the wall and was spraying down the Krynoid creature. Then, as it was confused, the Doctor swung the extinguisher up and dropped it down on the creature's 'head'. It dropped to the ground in a clump. The Doctor took a deep breath and stared down at it for a second before returning to the boiler door.

* * *

Christina looked at her watch. It was now a quarter to three. The alarm had gone off at two thirty. Everyone was in class, or in the lab or in their offices. She inched along the empty hallway. A few steps ahead was where the supply office was. Christina looked at the little wand that the Doctor gave her.

She walked up to the heavy metal shutter that had descended down on the door. Joseph had said that there had been some kind of mechanism behind the shutter, what was it. Christina closed her eyes and tried to remember. It hurt to think about Joseph. She shook her head, it did no good to get all emotional now. Her eyes fell upon a small pad on the wall.

"It had a password protection…" Christina said, as the memory seemed to rush to her like a big slobbering Labrador retriever, "connected to a magnetic seal."

Christina reached forward and touched the edges of the door, leaning her head against it. She could hear the hum. She took a step backward and pointed the wand at the door. Her fingers pressed a little button and the device in her hand whirred happily. Nothing happened. Christina blinked. She pointed it at the door again and pushed the button again. It whirred and Christina bit her lip as the shutter remained stubbornly in place.

"Aw come on!" Christina begged. "He said it would work, setting three magnetic locks!"

Christina pursed her lips and looked at the spanner device in her hand. Maybe it needed to be closer, or something. After all, you didn't wave a key at a door to unlock it. Christina knelt down and pointed the sonic screwdriver at the edges of the door where the magnetic seal was. The device whirred, this time its pitch shifted up and down as she slid the device across the edge. Christina surmised that the higher pitches were where the magnets were, since it didn't make any higher pitched noises when she just pointed it at the door. She continued to run the screwdriver over the edge of the door, holding the screwdriver over the areas where it was emitting a high pitch. After a few seconds the pitch would drop, which suggested that the magnet was shut off. There were three magnets and after about twelve seconds the last magnet turned off.

Christina stood back and then pressed against the shutter, pushing it up. The shutter shifted sliding up with a metallic rolling sound. Christina smiled pleased with herself. She reached up and tried to open the door, it was locked of course. However, it didn't stay locked for long. Christina nearly giggled as the door clicked unlocked at the point of the sonic screwdriver. She pushed the door open.

"Is it ok!?" a voice quickly shouted as a young man ran up to her. He was thin and lanky and looked half terrified. "I mean was it just a false alarm?"

Christina was a little stunned. She'd forgotten that there were people trapped in the rooms. She looked at him for a few seconds. He had blue eyes and flat blonde hair.

She snapped out of her stupor. "Uh, no…I'm afraid not."

"Then how did you get in?" the young man asked, as he looked at her. "You're breaking quarantine!"

"Look, I need these chemicals." Christina said showing the young man the list the Doctor gave her. "There's the plant, creature, monster thing…" The young man looked at her as if she was carrying the plague. Christina rolled her eyes and pushed the pad of paper into his hands. "Look, I just need these chemicals ok?"

"I can't just give them to a complete stranger!" The young man said. "I mean, there's requisitions and forms and sign outs and…"

Christina gave the man a glare that made him shrink back. He looked at the list again.

"What are you making?" the young man said. "Some of this stuff we don't carry…"

"Like what?"

"Well, like this…I mean it's a phenoxyl ester, they used it to make Agent Orange!" the man replied almost hysterically.

"Do you have the stuff that could be used to make the ester…thing…" Christina started to ask and then she realized she didn't even know the guy's name. "Umm, and you're name is…"

"Samuel." the man said. He looked at the list again and then at Christina. "And…I suppose we could find some stuff that could make some of this, or at least the constituents."

"Well?" "What?"

"GET IT!"

"Oh, right…" Samuel rushed off, getting a tub.

Christina shook her head and then turned. A cold hand gripped her heart as she saw the Krynoid hovering in the door. It was pronouncedly more shrubby than the last time she saw it. The glasses and hair were gone. It still had the vestiges of arms and legs but looked considerably more like one of those living trees in the Lord of the Rings than it did human. She could see the sharp barbs on its 'branches'. She slowly backed away not sure if it could see or not, considering that it didn't have any eyes she could identify.

"Umm, hey…Samuel." Christina whispered in a shouting sort of way.

"Yeah, what?" The young man replied, from behind a bookshelf filled with beakers and bottles and containers of different shapes and colors.

"You wouldn't happen to have any weapons or knives or…you know anything to protect yourself would you?" Christina whispered as she inched towards the cover of the bookshelf.

"No, why?" Samuel's head poked out from behind the bookshelf, his eyes fell on the creature. "Holy son of a…you weren't making it…oh my god…you weren't…"

"SHH!" Christina hissed, covering Samuel's mouth. She was still not completely certain that the Krynoid had in fact detected them, though she guessed that it knew there was something here. Samuel struggled slightly, Christina looked up at him. "I don't think it can see us…so if we're quiet, maybe it will leave."

Christina slid behind Samuel and slowly pulled him behind the bookshelf with her. She lifted her hand off of his mouth.

"What the hell is that thing!?" Samuel yelped in a hushed way as he threw a thumb back in the direction of the Krynoid.

"It's an experiment gone wrong, and it's dangerous; that's all you need to worry about." Christina whispered.

She lifted a finger to her lips. There was a shuffling noise of leaves. Things in the room scratched about.

"What are we going to do?" Samuel hissed as the creature's noises got closer.

"Are you sure we have nothing to defend ourselves?" Christina asked, looking up at Samuel.

"Pretty sure…I mean, there's volatile chemicals in here." Samuel said, sheepishly. "It's not like they're going to give me a gun…or a taser…or…well, they won't even allow me to have sharp objects, plus this place is locked up pretty tight…why are you looking at me like that?"

Christina smiled a goofy smile at him. "Oh, you're good."

Samuel blinked. "What?"

"Volatile chemicals…" Christina said, nudging.

"Yeah…"

"This place is a big chemistry stockroom, you can't tell me you don't have something we could use?" Christina said.

"But it's campus property…and…it's not like I can create something out of nothing, and we're not likely to get to the Bunsen burners to cook something up." Samuel said.

"You have acids though…right?" Christina asked.

"Yeah…"

"Really caustic ones, like sulfuric acid or hydrochloric…right?" Christina asked.

"Actually…" Samuel said, turning and running his finger down a shelf and pulled out a large jug with a bright red label saying 'corrosive'. "There's some sulfuric acid right here. And some pretty damned potent stuff, Dr. Tibson wanted it to make hydrochloric acid from salt." Samuel furrowed his brow. "But, even if we have it, we'd have no way of, you know, using it."

"Can't we just chuck it at the thing?" Christina replied.

"Well, yeah if you want to start a thousand different chemical reactions off in a room that's basically a bomb waiting to happen." Samuel replied, rather annoyed.

He thought for a second and then as if a thought hit him he shuffled past Christina and to a desk a few feet away. There was a small cabinet above the desk and he carefully opened the squeaky doors. It was filled with spray bottles. He reached down to the desk and slid a door open and pulled out a giant pipette. He grabbed some gloves and two pairs of glasses off of the desk and then crept back to the book shelf. He handed Christina the glasses and the pipette and the spray bottle. He put on his glasses and the glove. He then motioned for Christina to give him the bottle and the pipette, which she did. He then slowly opened the jar of acid, and inserted the pipette, dragging in a quantity of the acid and then carefully depositing in into the spray bottle. He did this several times before he seemed pleased. He then closed the jar and looked at Christina.

"We've got about five or six sprays." Samuel said, looking at the bottle. "That should do it for a bit."

Christina slowly nodded. Samuel inched his way to the end of the bookshelf and peered around. Christina stood right behind him. The Krynoid was looming over by the desk near the door. It turned slowly one way and then another as if it were searching for something. Samuel slowly inched around the bookshelf and got closer and closer to the creature. The Krynoid stopped turning, facing Samuel.

"Be careful…don't let it touch you…" Christina hissed.

"Oh, thanks for telling me that now…" Samuel returned, flicking a glare back at Christina.

He looked back at the Krynoid. The creature was still. Like a coiled snake or an opened Venus Flytrap. Samuel gulped slightly and raised his arm bringing the spray bottle up to level. Christina lifted her hands up to her mouth as he pulled the trigger.

A fine but dense spray spat over the Krynoid. The creature jerked back in surprise. Samuel hit it with another spray, and then a third. The creature, at first didn't seem overly affected as Samuel retreated away from it. As Samuel got to the edge of the bookshelf the Krynoid seemed to go mad, it let out a screechy sort of noise and flailed as steam rose off of it.

"What's happened?"

"Dehydration…" Samuel said, looking at the spray bottle. "Only it's worse than that…"

Christina blinked as she watched the Krynoid flail retreating out of the room, screeching as it did, steam pouring off of it.

"You said worse?"

"Sulfuric acid, releases a lot of energy when it dehydrates something…with this concentration there could be some significant charring…" Samuel said, looking to Christina.

"Can you fill that bottle up?" Christina asked as she looked at Samuel.

"It's not exactly something someone should be just carrying about…" Samuel said shaking his head. "If it weren't for the fact that these bottles are especially made to be not reactant…"

"Ok, fine then can you just get those chemicals I need?" Christina asked, looking up at the young man.

"Right away." Samuel said as he went back to the tub half filled with chemicals.

Christina leaned against the wall. She just covered Joseph in sulfuric acid. She winced, that thing wasn't Joseph that's what she'd been telling herself. She looked over at Samuel. He was busily clanking bottles into place, carefully.

"You know, it's probably not safe here." Christina said.

"Safer here than out there." Samuel replied, quietly.

"I'm with this guy, he has this machine." Christina said, looking to the floor. "We'd be safe in there. I'm sure he'd understand if you came with me…"

"Oh, really, what kind of machine? A weed whacker?" Samuel said, almost laughing.

"It's a little difficult to explain." Christina said, she looked up at the ceiling. "But…if you wanted to come. I mean after all…I need someone to watch my back…"

" Right, well…" Samuel looked at Christina, "it wouldn't be right to let you wander about out there on your own."

* * *

"Ok, Doctor." The Doctor said, surprisingly to himself. He looked at the gray lit interconnection of pipes and wires that fed into a large water pipe. He laid his finger on the large conjunction of pipes. "This is the main feed…."

The Doctor traced a litany of pipes up from the main feed to a second large junction. He surmised that it had to be the sprinkler system. He carefully pulled himself up to the second junction and inspected it. He jumped down and turned the water off at the main feed and then clambered back up to the second junction and took out a Janus wrench. The little electron pulse emitters gave an energetic hiss as they fell upon the bolts and removed the large metal plugs. He snatched the bolts and pocketed them and then took off the pipe that connected the secondary junction to the main feed of the water system and put it down on the floor. He took a deep breath and looked. If his calculations were right he needed a about a liter and a half of the defoliate once he added the proper catalytic enzymes.

He closed his eyes. The Clampton Krynoid's words still bothered him. If what he said was true then plants everywhere shared a kind of sentience. The last Krynoid he faced was barely even sentient, it was just a beast but these ones, they were smart, more than smart. Could he truly kill them did he have that right? He shook his head, no time for that, he had to get back to the TARDIS.

He climbed a few steps and slowly opened the door and poked his head out. Clampton was gone. The Doctor looked both ways in case the creature was lurking near by. He slowly closed the door and slid along the wall of the corridor. He could hear the people upstairs shuffling about, trapped in labs and classrooms. He feared that there were many trapped out in the halls.

He knew what happened if he didn't stop the Krynoid. That's how he had gotten here in the first place. A quick trip to Earth to see the 2016 Olympics, and he'd found it overgrown. Covered in leaves and hungry Krynoid. It had worried him and he'd shunted himself to Alpha Centauri, only to find the home of the hermaphroditic hexapods to be overrun by Krynoid. The plants had taken over half the galaxy in eight years time.

At least now he figured out how. The trick was stopping them. That's when he heard the slushing footsteps behind him and he turned. Two Krynoid were lurching up behind him. One was still largely human, a young woman by the looks of her. The other was more mature, less human, but it's outer covering of leaves were charred. The Doctor wondered what could've happened to it.

"Hello…" The Doctor said as he backed away from the two Krynoid. "I see you've claimed another victim."

The woman's head tilted. "You aren't like the others."

"No, I should hope not." The Doctor admitted.

The woman looked to the more mature Krynoid. There seemed to be some unheard conversation. "This one has technology. A vessel…blue, in the shape of a box that isn't a box."

"Ah, yes but the more important thing is, what happened to your friend? It doesn't look too healthy all burnt up…" The Doctor said trying to steer the conversation away.

"The animals fought back. The damage looks worse than it is." The woman said, green tendrils flexed just under her skin. "We will grow back."

The Doctor kept inching away keeping one eye on the Krynoids and the other on the door that led to the lounge which held the TARDIS. The Krynoid new about the TARDIS. That most definitely wasn't good. Maybe it was his intervention that led to the Krynoid's expansion. If so this was one of the largest paradoxes he'd ever been apart of.

"Now, it needn't be this way." The Doctor said. "Listen. I could take you to a nice uninhabited world with plenty of soil and rock to bury your roots in. You could plant your gardens and be happy. There's no need for all of this death and destruction."

"Animals lie." the woman said, little worms of green twisted out from the corners of her dead, brown eyes. "We know your lies. You plan to destroy us."

"If necessary." The Doctor replied. "I don't want to, not now. All you have to do is promise to stop this. You needn't harm others. You can survive in a way that doesn't hurt another sentient beings."

"All life kills, Doctor." The woman replied as her ears burst open with leaves. She tilted her greening face at the Doctor and lifted a shaggy green finger at the Doctor. "And you kill most of all…"

The Doctor suddenly got the feeling that something was behind him. He spun around to find a Krynoid lurching out of the stair well into the corridor behind him, blocking him from his escape to the TARDIS. It was more mature than the woman.

"We will take you, Doctor." the voice of woman said as tendrils rustled out of her mouth. "Take you and your technology and we'll spread our roots across the universe. It'll be a green revolution across the stars, all of the stars!"


	4. Chapter 4

"Now…just a second you may want to think about this." The Doctor said pressing up his back up against the wall. The three Krynoids bearing down on him. "I am a Time Lord…and they don't look to kindly on one of their own being well…I suppose the word's planted…"

The charred Krynoid lifted its twisted and blackened limb, which had been an arm in a past life. Its barbs were still sharp looking though and a bit of florescent light glistened off the little ooze that bubbled up from the pores on the barb. The Doctor gulped and instinctively clamped his eyes shut.

"Hey! Space weeds!" shouted a voice. The Doctor opened his eyes in surprise as he saw Christina and a young man running towards him.

"Get away! Get back to the TARDIS!" the Doctor shouted. Christina's young male friend charged ahead and whipped out a clear plastic spray bottle.

The three Krynoid's hissed retreating from the young man, making an opening and the Doctor dove away scrambling past the young man as he pointed the bottle at the plants.

"Who's he?" The Doctor said breathlessly as he turned.

"Sam, met him in the Chemistry stockroom." Christina said, as she took the Doctor's arm.

They retreated with Sam walking slightly behind them his back to them, the bottle still pointed at the rasping plants. They got a few yards away before they turned and ran. Before long they were in the lounge and the Doctor was fiddling with the TARDIS door opening it and ushering everyone in, closing it behind him.

"This is my space ship, and time ship, and I'm an alien and yes, it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside." The Doctor said, sideways to Sam as he walked towards the console's dais and bent down to look at the tub of chemicals that they'd brought.

"I know, Christina said as much." Sam said not nearly as perturbed by the experience as the Doctor had hoped.

The Doctor looked up at the bottle in Sam's hand. "So, you burnt the Krynoid with sulfuric acid."

"Yeah…" Sam stopped and looked at him. "How'd you…"

"Met your victim. The burn patterns are distinctive." The Doctor said, as he grabbed the tub and lifted it as he stood up. "Now, we haven't much time. I have to mix these chemicals and cook them and hopefully, if we're lucky, end up with a liter and a half of this stuff." He looked at the chemical bottles. "Not much room for error…"

"So, temporal orbit again…" Christina replied pleased she was able to remember it from the last time.

"No need. I have a rather advance chemistry lab around here somewhere." The Doctor said as he started to walk away.

Sam and Christina followed him and he shouldered a door that led out of the console room and into a massive hallway. It was like some great Victorian mansion. The ambient lighting seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere and the small hexagonal patterns inlayed in the walls were a bit more obvious. The Doctor turned right and then left and then right and then towards a diagonal passage before sweeping around into a small side passage.

"Are you lost?" Sam whispered.

"Yes, it's like a city in here." Christina admitted as she looked around, she half expected to see a newspaper kiosk coming up.

"Ah, here it is!" The Doctor said as he shouldered another door and walked into a giant room.

Christina and Sam winced as the white light glared into their eyes. It took several minutes for their eyes to adjust. The room was clinically white, science fictionally white. What looked like plastic roundels were organized on the walls. Long black tables rowed the room.

"If you have this advanced of a lab, why pilfer from the school?" Sam asked, looking at the Doctor as he laid out the chemicals from the tub.

"Don't keep it as stocked as I used to." The Doctor replied. "I'm not much of a chemistry enthusiast, I mean I know chemistry and it can be fascinating but, it's not something I do recreationally. At least not this me, four or six mes ago, maybe…"

He took out a small object that was cylindrical with flashing lights on it and turned a dial. The lights became more constant and there was a whirring.

"What's that?" Christina asked.

"Radiative thermo-inducer." The Doctor replied as he got a giant jar filled with a clear liquid and put it on a stand above the 'inducer'. He started mixing in the chemicals into the jar.

"And a Radiative thermo-inducer is…?" Christina said.

"Posh name for super Bunsen burner, uses radiation instead of fire to heat subjects." The Doctor replied. "Like a microwave except…without all that fuss with tinfoil." he stuck a small rod with a wire into the liquid and looking at a LCD screen. "Right, now for the chemites."

He turned and rushed to a cupboard. Christina followed him and stood behind him. Sam was wandering around the lab, almost in awe of it. Sam looked at the back of the velvety green jacket of the Doctor.

"He's really gone, isn't he." Christina said quietly. "I mean Sam burned him, and I didn't even flinch at the thought that I was having some other man spray down my fiancé with sulfuric acid."

"Acceptance is one of the steps." The Doctor said as he searched innards of the cupboard it was filled with a large number of strangely colored chemicals and bottles with long labels on them.

"It's just, weird. I expected this to be a bit more…painful." Christina said, rubbing her arm. "I just don't…"

"Ah ha!" The Doctor said suddenly and took out a little green bottle. "Chemites, chemistry nanites, used to synthesize any chemical almost instantaneously. Now to program them!"

"Doctor, what do I tell his mother…and his father. God what do I tell my mom and dad." Christina said, as the Doctor poured the chemites into a little bowl set on a glowing terminal.

"Don't worry, there'll be a cover story. UNIT has gotten quite good at them." The Doctor said, offhandedly. "Moved on a bit from the Venus rising through swamp gas of old."

"That's not what I mean…" Christina said. "He's dead."

""Yes."

"Don't you understand?" Christina replied, staring up at the Doctor. His eyes were fixed on a screen in front of him. "He's dead and all you can do is make a joke about government cover stories."

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Death is a fact of life. For some more than others. I can tell you many things and give you many reasons for the death of a person. It doesn't change the facts." he looked at Christina, his storm blue eyes flickered in the glaring light of the lab. "Life though is far more important, if you can give someone something to live for, it's far more powerful than giving them something to die for." His attention returned to the chemites. "Joseph is dead. It was a horrendous accident, but we can't be bogged down in it right now. The world, the galaxy is in danger we can think about the consequences afterwards."

Christina was about to argue in response but Sam showed up.

"So what exactly are you going to do?" Sam asked as he looked at the Doctor.

"We're making a batch of defoliate and herbicide." the Doctor said, as he looked into the bowl on the lighted terminal. It was glowing a soft pink. "With any luck that will kill them."

"And how are you going to you know spread it?" Sam asked looking a little worried.

"The sprinkler system…" The Doctor replied, taking the bowl off of the terminal and carrying over to where the jar full of the stuff the Doctor was putting together sat. He dumped the contents of the bowl into the jar and then turned. "Now I need a reservoir to put the chemical in."

Sam and Christina looked at the jar it had a soft golden look to it, glowing softly. The Doctor was wandering from cupboard to cupboard.

"But the herbicide…if you use the sprinklers won't you get the people in the classrooms and labs covered. I mean even if it's an herbicide it won't be good for them." Christina said, looking up.

"I'll divert the flow of the water from the classrooms then." The Doctor said patting his jacket. "After all…I have…"

Christina reached into her pants pocket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor smiled and then resumed his search. It took about five minutes but he came back with a box of sorts it was more like a large water jug, save the spicket ended in two nozzles that looked like they could attach to house plumbing. He walked back to the jar, with the jug, taking the sonic screwdriver from Christina as he did. He twisted the cap off of the tub and looked at the jar, it was glowing a soft red now.

"Red means ready." The Doctor half sang as he put on some hot pads and lifted the jar off of the 'thermo-inducer'.

He carefully poured the chemical into the jug. It steamed slightly as it hit the plasticine jug. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a vile of powder. He opened a drawer under the table and pulled out a long stirring rod and then poured the powder into the jug and stirred it. He nodded sharply and then picked the jug up again.

"It's ready?" Sam asked looking at the jug full of reddish liquid.

"It's ready." The Doctor nodded, looking at Sam. "Now off we go."

They made their way out of the TARDIS. At the doors, the Doctor told Sam to have his squirt bottle ready. They walked out of the TARDIS and there was nothing. The Doctor furrowed his brow but continued forward.

He poked his head out of the lounge into the hall. He stepped out, Christina and Sam following. He handed the jug over to Christina and reached up and whirred his sonic screwdriver at a sprinkler. He then continued down the corridor, each time reaching up to a sprinkler whirring the screwdriver and then continuing.

"Where are they?" Sam asked quietly.

"I don't know." Christina said, as she looked around.

"They're hunting." the Doctor said, pocketing his sonic screwdriver. "Right, that should keep the sprinklers isolated to the hallways."

"But the ones upstairs."

"I transmitted a signal through the piping got them all." The Doctor said, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

"Really?"

"I'm very good." the Doctor replied as he turned and walked triumphantly forward.

He turned a short corner to where the boiler room door was and stopped, retreated a bit and held Christina and Sam back.

"What is it?" Christina whispered.

"Krynoid…" the Doctor replied.

"I'll shift him." Sam said, lifting his squirt bottle.

"How many shots do you have?" the Doctor asked.

"About six." Sam said.

"If you hurt it, it'll call in reinforcements." The Doctor said, he turned to Christina. "Give me the jug. I'm going to ask you to do something for me that's a bit…well…dangerous."

"Really? Who'd have thought?" Christina replied.

"I need you two to keep the Krynoid distracted while I install this into the sprinkler system." The Doctor said, patting the jug.

"Distracted as in…" Sam started.

"Bait." Christina said, as she looked to the Doctor who was nodding.

"Are you nuts?" Sam hissed.

"If worse comes to worse, use the sulfuric acid and get back to the TARDIS." the Doctor replied, lifting a hand in a placating fashion. "In fact, give me five minutes and head back to the TARDIS."

Sam looked at Christina. His lack of confidence rest on his face like a sick crocodile. Christina took a deep breath and then sprinted out into the corridor. Sam looked to the Doctor and then followed her. The Doctor hid in a little nook in the hall and peered around the edge and watched as the Krynoid guard chased Christina and the Doctor skirted along the edge of the hall to the boiler room and went inside. He jumped down the steps and skidded to the plumbing he'd looked at earlier. With his sonic screwdriver and Janus wrench he made quick work of the piping. Now all that was left was to put the jug into place and get back to the TARDIS and start the sprinklers.

* * *

Christina slid around a corner and ran, Sam charging behind her. The air whipped her face and she was constantly slapping her hair out of her face as she ran. She didn't bother to look back, in case the Krynoid happened to be far closer to them than she had hoped.

She could feel her heart thundering in her ears. They ran into the giant entry near the front of the science building. She turned to run for the giant spiral staircase that went to the second floor but she skidded to a stop. Sam ran into her and both nearly fell to the floor.

"What's wrong?" Sam growled as he looked at her.

She pointed up. The stairs were covered in green vines. Six Krynoid creatures hovered like living scarecrows on the stairs, seemingly staring at them. She turned around the Krynoid that was chasing them was entering the entry. It was a large open area that led into two hallways or up onto the second floor. The front doors were sealed shut. She gulped and grabbed Sam's hand and pulled him behind her as she ran for the only exit they had left.

She could hear the hisses of Krynoid behind her. The sound of slushing as leafy feet swept over cold, tiled floors. She looked ahead, half dreading where they were going, half knowing it was the only way the hall led. She slid around another corner, away from a set of stairs where more hissing rushed down at them. Before long they'd be back at the boiler room if they kept running, the science building was one large rectangle, but first they had to go past the greenhouse.

The floor beneath their feet was getting more and more cracked. The walls were being covered, slowly, by vines as fingers of vegetation seemed to spread across the surface. As they got closer to the greenhouse the hall looked more like a tropical rainforest than a science hall in Virginia. She half expected a jaguar or one of those strange pig things she'd seen on Animal Planet to come running out from the underbrush.

"What the hell is going on?" Christina heard Sam say.

"The Doctor said…that the Krynoid when fully grown can command plants." Christina replied, not looking back.

Afraid of what was back there. She gulped as she came up to the greenhouse, just this morning her fiancé had tried to kill her there, only just this morning the Doctor had saved her life, only just this morning had she been thrown into the deep end of a universe she'd never even thought about beyond her job, her friends and her family. A figure rested in their path. Christina skidded to a stop. The figure rose up, it was more tree than person but she saw the burnt remains of leaves, she knew which of the Krynoid it was. Behind them the hissing stopped. Sam was shaking behind her.

"We're going to die…we're going to die." Sam said, pressing his back against hers.

Christina turned her head back to look at Sam, he was shakily holding his squirt bottle at the horde of what was now ten Krynoid creatures looming behind them.

The oldest Krynoid, the most tree like, the one barring their path forward, shifted slightly moving forward. Christina took a deep breath.

"Joseph, stop this right now!" Christina shouted in her most demanding voice, the kind of voice that had on many occasions made Joseph not only stop but possibly make him pee himself a bit as well.

The tree fixed its root-like feet to the ground and tilted what was presumed to be its head slightly.

"Look, as sexy as it is that you're shouting at a tree monster may seem…" Sam started, he was still shaking. "I've only got six shots…and there are like…almost a dozen of those Krynoid things…"

"We only need another minute or so…" Christina whispered. "then the Doctor will have it all installed."

"Oh, great then we get poisoned…thanks." Sam replied.

"You have a better idea?" Christina replied.

"Actually…" Sam turned and looked at the oldest Krynoid and pointed his squirt bottle at it. "Remember this?"

The tree shuddered slightly. Whether the shudder was in fear or rage or disgust Christina wasn't sure.

"You move, or you'll get another spritz of this in the face." Sam said gulping slightly as he pointed the bottle at the eldest Krynoid.

"Ssssulfuric acsssid…" one of the creatures from behind them said. "We've been working on a countermeazsssure for it."

Sam gulped slightly and pulled the trigger on the bottle. The mist fell on the eldest Krynoid. Christina stared at the leaves, they were different, waxier, thicker.

Christina blinked, "Crap…"

"What?" Sam said as he waited for reaction to start.

"The leaves look at them." Christina said pointing at the tree.

"Yeah, they're waxi…." Sam dropped the bottle of acid.

"A mucozsssal rezssin." the group of creatures behind Christina and Sam said almost in unison. "Blocking the assscid."

Christina turned to the oldest Krynoid. "Please, stop doing this. I can't claim to understand everything but you seem to be smart, you don't have to do this."

"She sssspeaksss with the wordsss of the Time Lord." the creatures said in unison. "Animal wordsss of pleading…worthlessss to usss." The creatures lurched forward in unison.

Christina turned and backed away but stopped remembering the tree behind them. She looked back at the tree. "Stop them…or else!"

"You have no weaponssss…" the Krynoid replied.

"Ah, but they do have an ally!" there was a voice over the PA. "Sorry, took a bit, had to hack into the PA system. I can see you too, security camera, someone's gotten themselves a green thumb."

"It's the…" Sam started.

"Doctor!" Christina shouted.

"Yep, now as we speak, I'm upstairs, I've got myself a lighter, and I'm reasonably close to a fire sprinkler which happens to doctored…oo bad pun…with what I like to call multi-spectral defoliating herbicide." the Doctor's voice came over the intercom with little cracks and whistles. "Now, I think you have one of two choices, Krynoid. You can come get me and leave my friends alone or, I start a fire and you all get, well, wilted."

The Krynoid creatures hissed loudly and turned retreating back up the hall. The tree shuddered and tendrils of green ripped through the walls of the hallway. Sam grabbed Christina's hand and made a run for it as a giant tendril of morning glory exploded through a door. They sprinted back up the hallway. Running as fast as they could back to where the lounge was, back to the TARDIS. The Krynoids had plodded up the stairs and they ran to the left towards the entry. Roots of plants raced alongside their heads, through the walls and under their feet. They tripped as they ran.

Before long they were at the lounge. The TARDIS stood in front of them like mighty fortress. Sam ran for the doors, they were locked of course but he continued to jingle to door. He turned to Christina.

"The key, give me the key!" Sam said, holding his hand out.

"We can't just leave him up there, they'll massacre him." Christina said, holding the TARDIS key against herself.

"He can take care of himself." Sam said insistant on her giving him the key.

"I'm going back for him!" Christina shouted.

* * *

The Doctor stood in the chemistry stockroom. There was a surveillance camera screen and a telephone patched into the PA system there. He played with the lighter in his hand, fingering it and palming it and making it disappear up his sleeve.

He could hear the Krynoid marching towards him and he stood up, walked into the hallway and held the lighter up to a sprinkler above his head. The Krynoids massed in front of him twelve altogether, with a thirteenth, the original lurking down below.

"I'm going to give you one last warning." the Doctor said. "One last chance."

The creatures all tilted their heads in the same direction at the same time in the same way.

"I can take you to an uninhabited world, you can live peacefully, no one else has to be hurt or killed or eaten today." The Doctor said, calmly but forcibly.

"We could take you into usss, Time Lord." the creatures said in unison. "We could integrate the entire universsse."

The Doctor put pressure on the lighter. "You won't get that far. I'll die if it means keeping you contained…"

The floor under the Doctor's feet rumbled, he stumbled slightly as a massive tree ripped up through the floor. The other Krynoid pounced forward and the Doctor barely leaped free of them, but the lighter skittered sliding down the hall. The Doctor scrambled forward trying to grab it but a vine snagged his foot, and he was being dragged towards the tree.

He clawed at the tiled floor dragging his fingernails against ever nook and cranny and bump hoping to find something substantial to hold onto.

"Doctor!" Christina shouted. The Doctor looked up.

She was running towards him.

"The lighter! Get the lighter!" the Doctor shouted, pointing to it.

She turned and ran for it but a series of branches crackled up around her, like a massive claw. He could see Christina straining, splaying her fingers towards the lighter but to no use. The Doctor looked back. The Krynoid were looming behind him across the hole in the floor made by the massive tree. It was all looking bleak now. He could see it unfolding the Krynoid taking his memories controlling the TARDIS crossing the galaxy, the universe, time, their seeds spreading like an unstoppable forest fire. He clenched his fists, he had to get free had to stop it all from happening.

"Let them go!" The Doctor looked up, it was Sam. He was holding the lighter above his head, thumb on the flint. "Let them go, now, or I will start the sprinklers."

The tendril loosened around the Doctor's foot and he quickly freed himself and ran to Christina who was released by the tree branches. They regrouped around Sam. The young man glared at the Krynoid, there was something in his eyes and before the Doctor could respond. Sam's thumb came down. The flame flickered up and the fire alarm went off.

The Doctor grabbed Sam, but he heard the water rushing forward through the pipes. He then took them both and ran for it, running for the stairs. He pushed them into the hallway, they were drenched and smelled of chemicals and he pushed them into the lounge and into the TARDIS.

As the door closed behind them the Doctor turned on Sam.

"You killed them, in cold blood!" the Doctor shouted at the young man.

"They would've killed us all, they were going to kill you and Christina!" Sam shot back. "They would've killed everything."

"None the less, we could've reasoned with them!" the Doctor said, pointedly.

"Yeah and we saw how that ended!" Sam retorted, looking the Doctor in the eyes, not flinching not afraid.

"You said they would kill the world, Doctor." Christina looked up at him. "It was them or us…and you know it. There was no other choice."

"There is always another choice!" the Doctor said looking from one human to the other.

"And they made the choice for us." Sam said, passing the lighter to the Doctor and walking towards the chairs on the far end of the console room.

The entire TARDIS shook, hard like a tidal wave had hit it. The Doctor looked up in surprise and then rushed for the doors. Christina and Sam ran after him. He rushed out, into open air. The sky was gray and surrounding them was the remains of a bombed out building of some sort. Sam and Christina blinked as they looked around.

"Where's the…aaaaaaaaaaah!" Christina's question fled into a scream.

The Doctor turned. Christina and Sam were leaning against the TARDIS a golden energy swarmed around them as they screamed, slumping back against the TARDIS. The Doctor ran to them pushed them back into the TARDIS, he had to act quickly, he knew what was happening they had changed the world….

* * *

"The wave-front has passed!" The metallic voice of the Dalek screeched. An eye stalk swiveled around, appraising the owner's accomplices. "Spa-tial distor-tion reminiscent of a Type-40 TAR-DIS de-tected, re-ceeding from campus sci-ence building!"

"IT – WAS – THE DOC-TOR! THE DE-SIRED FU-TURE EF-FECTS HAVE BEEN NULLIFIED! HOW-EVER CAUSAL DISRUPTION CONTINUES, WAVE DISRUPTION IS STOCHASTIC THROUGHOUT HIS-TORICAL E-VENT CAUSALITIES!" One of the accomplices screeched. Its metallic travel machine was burnished copper like the first's machine; the blue light from the eye stalk compressed in agitation. It hummed as it glided forward. A long metallic arm with a clawed end rose up and pressed a button, the viewing screen that the three creatures were watching flicked to a different image that swirled and twisted. "We knew that they would in-ter-fere!"

The second dalek swiveled its 'head' around and stared at the third Dalek. Unlike the other two it was black.

"What is the o-verall quan-tum effect?" The third Dalek demanded in a calm, for a Dalek, way. "Have we ad-vanced Da-lek po-si-tion? Have the Time-Lords re-treated from the Kalsiv-i-di-an Plains?"

"Un-known." The first Dalek reported. It looked up at the screen again. "Quan-tum reso-lu-tion is on-ly at twenty seven per-cent." Its eye swept back to the black Dalek. "Cau-sal transi-tion has oc-curred, but tempor-al disruptions are still ac-tively inter-acting with multiple quan-tum configur-ations!"

"Pro-ject Hu-man Enlightenment, must suc-ceed! WE SHALL MAKE PREPARATIONS FOR OUR SECONDARY ADVANCEMENT PRO-GRAM!" the black Dalek groused starting to spin up into fury. It moved forward and stared intently at the screen. Fury subsided as the Dalek's vocal systems calmed. "Bring me Pro-fessor Ar-len!"

"Such an ac-tion is un-wise!" the second Dalek replied. The first Dalek glided backward turned its eye stalk to the second Dalek and then to the black Dalek. The black Dalek's eye stalk slowly but meaningfully turned to the second Dalek. The second Dalek adjusted its eyestalk to focus on the black's. "U-NIT forces are active in the u-niversity! They know of our spe-cies! Revel-a-tion of our pre-sence here will re-sult in hostile re-action from the hu-mans, or from the Shadow Procla-mation!"

"We must fur-ther hu-man tech-no-logical ad-vance-ment! OUR MIS-SION MUST BE COM-PLE-TED!" The black Dalek retorted. It swiveled to the second Dalek. "YOU – WILL – O-BEY! YOU ARE A DA-LEK!" The second Dalek and the black Dalek stared at each other. If the first Dalek had had a sense of awkwardness or tension it would've been able to cut it with a laser cutting appendage. Finally the second copper Dalek backed down. The black Dalek swiveled to the first Dalek. "O-pen the time tun-nel. Bring me Pro-fes-sor Ar-len! We shall com-mence with edu-ca-tional activ-i-ties imme-di-ately!" The black Dalek swiveled to the second copper Dalek "You will prepare the mirrors for the chronic displacement demonstration!"

"I…" the second Dalek hesitated the tension again would've been palpable as it stared straight into the black Dalek's eyestalk, "o-bey…."

**

* * *

**

**A/N: Next time….The Lincoln Conspiracy….**


End file.
